Laptops Arena

As far as Asus computers laptops are concerned, one model that offers good value for money is the Asus X38Vm-X2. This is a budget laptop which surprisingly offers a good graphics care and some integrated graphics that can’t handle any new games.
<-300x250 Medium Rectangle - center->
For $800 dollars you can buy this laptop that has a 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7450 processor which is combined with 4 GB of DDR2 RAM. It also comes equipped with the nVidia GeForce 9600M GS graphics card with 1 GB of video memory and 320 GB of hard disk space. This Asus model looks fancy at the least. It has an interesting lid color which makes it a powerful presence in a store filled with so many laptops. If you want to ever upgrade this laptop, on the bottom you will find two panels which are simple to remove. Be careful with messing with whatever is inside there as not to void the warranty. Apparently, this laptop only has a warranty void sticker on the screw of the heat sink. To everyone’s surprise, the video card is upgradeable. We think that the 9600M GS is good enough so don’t go doing any useless video card removal. The screen is bright so there is not much complaining to be done here. Both the horizontal and the vertical viewing angles offer nothing special but that is what you get with low priced laptops.

The speakers are weak. This is mainly because the speakers are located on the bottom front of the laptop. This is why I am a big fan of speakers which are located above the keyboard because the sound is projected straight up and there is no muffle. To get better sound it is recommended to keep the laptop on a flat surface like a table or desk because the sound is horrible if you keep it on your lap. The keyboard is ok and there is no disturbing flex. The response is ok so typing will never be bothering with this keyboard. Personally, I hate the color of the keys. There is a combination of brown keys, the letters are light brown and the function keys have red letters... it’s a very strange combination and since this budget laptop does not have keys with LED backup, you won’t see anything in low light. The touchpad is ok and it has a nice imprint finish. The problems are the left and right mouse buttons which are stiff and hard to press and they also make an annoying clicking sound. We do recommend and external mouse so you don’t get any headaches.



The ports and connections are in a big enough number to keep you satisfied. There are 5 USB ports, one VGA port, an Express Card slot, a FireWire, an Ethernet port, a HDMI port, an eSATA port and the headphones and microphone jack. This laptop has a Bluetooth indicator light even if there is no Bluetooth device.  The processor and the RAM are combined in such a manner so it can handle most applications. Basic tasks are done at good speed. 320 GB is enough free space so you can store all your pictures, documents, music, movies, games and applications. The graphics card has 1 GB of video memory and this can be considered a waste because the processor is not good enough to handle that much memory. 512 MB would have been sufficient. It is easy to overclock  the GPU and you will be able to play good games at a native resolution.



For a 14.1 inch laptop, the battery life is quite ok. Of course, we have seen better especially for ultra portables. Of course we don’t expect this laptop to have 7 hours of battery life like a netbook does but still the whole concept of a laptop is portability (except for those big units that are designed to be desktop replacements) and what is portability if the laptop will not stay turned on when you most need it? You will get about 3 hours of battery life if you have the wireless card turned on and the brightness of the display set close to the bottom level. The good thing is that even with the display’s brightness set at minimum level, the screen is legible even under pretty strong light. It is amazing how the fan on this Asus computer laptop manages to keep the unit under normal acceptable temperatures. This is particularly nice especially since you can barely hear any noise coming out of this laptop. You will notice some heat in the areas where the processor and the graphics card but the keyboard and the palm rest area are perfectly usable.



Of course this laptop has some problems but they are not big enough to make you say “I would never buy this laptop”. The price is low for the specs. However, we don’t recommend this unit as a gaming laptop because performance is not that spectacular to let you play games like Far Cry 2. The GeForce 9600M GS will handle some mainstream games but don’t expect to get any super game play experience with this laptop. It’s nice to see that this unit has no problems with heating but I’m guessing that if you use this computer on your lap it will become a bit more heated than if you use it on your desk. It does have all the necessary number of ports and connections so your possibilities are not limited with this laptop. Who knows when you will want to attach an external monitor and enjoy a good movie with a couple more friends? Especially since the horizontal and vertical viewing angles are not good at all.



The combination of colors on the keyboard is not appealing to the eye at all (red and brown?!). The speakers are awful so headphones or some external speakers would be a wise choice for listening to music and watching movies. We didn’t understand the Bluetooth light since there is no Bluetooth but that’s something we can live with.

Another new trend in business notebooks are the tablet PC’s. If you are looking to buy such a gadget or if you are just interested in seeing what this fuss is all about, read this article about tablet notebook reviews and maybe you’ll come across an interesting model which you want to buy for yourself.
<-300x250 Medium Rectangle - center->
As we suspected, the most popular tablet notebook is a HP. The HP Pavilion tx2500 has a 2.4 GHz AMD Turion X2 Ultra ZM-86 processor, 3 GB of RAM, 160 GB of hard drive space and the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200 graphics card. it also has 3 USB ports, one multi format card reader, one expansion port, an Express Card slot, one VGA plus one S-Video port and two headphones plus one microphone jack. The design is quite elegant with the glossy black lid which has a beautiful imprint finish. We think this laptops is going to attract some students because it’s great for taking notes in class even if it a bit heavy for constant and every day carrying. The active digitizer plus the touch screen makes it easy to surf the internet and you can use either the integrated pen or your finger (be careful with dirty hands and with leaving fingerprints all over the display).

The 12.1 inch display is not small in a way that can disturb you when your reading big documents and web pages and it’s neither too big to make the notebook heavy. The hinge is extremely powerful so it can resist to numerous rotations of the display.  For on-screen navigation you will prefer the pen because it travels with better accuracy than when you’re using your own fingers. For the tx2500, HP went with the AMD “Puma” platform. The keyboard is solid and it offers positive response when you’re typing. The touchpad is also ok and we have no complaints here whatsoever. And now on we go to the pen. The nice thing is that the screen recognizes the pen even if it is an inch away from the display. The touch screen can be disabled and this is cool because your hand will no longer get in the way when you are writing. This is a nice feature especially because most people tent to rest their hands on the screen when they are writing and if the touch screen is not disabled, this could have been a problem. On the other end, the pen has as eraser which is very practical when you make a writing mistake and you need to quickly erase it and continue writing.



If you use this tablet notebook for writing with the pen, editing documents or surfing the internet, the temperature will remain under normal conditions. However, when you run applications which have big memory requirements, you will notice the notebook gets a bit hot. Except for this minor inconvenient, there are no problems. The fan manages to keep the tablet cool without making any kind of disturbing noise. The 6-cell battery is also quite satisfying as it provides about 3 hours of notebook usage under medium settings (like the Windows Vista balance mode) and if this does not make you happy, buy the 8-cell battery which is available to help you get a little more battery life (it’s nice to have two fully charged batteries with you when you’re travelling because you never know when the spare one comes in handy). Even if the display is somehow washed out under bright light, this notebook has left us a good impression thanks to the solid design, the entertainment features and the active digitizer plus the touch screen.



Our second choice for the tablet notebook review was the Asus Eee PC T91. This very cheap notebook ($500) has about the same specs as a regular netbook but the big advantage is the tablet feature that can come in handy when you least expect it. This tablet notebook comes with a 1.33 GHz Intel Atom Z520 processor, 1 GB of RAM, 52 GB of disk storage and the Intel GMA 950 graphics card. As you can see, the specs show nothing of nigh performance but it’s the price and portability that make this Eee PC T91 stand out in front of the crowd. Let’s just hope it will have the same success as the other Eee PCs launched by Asus. This jewel is available in both white and black and the resistance of this notebook is not questionable. The hinge is very solid and it will keep the display steady in place even after long months of rotating the screen from the normal position to the tablet position. Another thing we really appreciated was that this tablet came with a slip case that can protect the small notebook when you carry it around. This will prevent any scratches on the surface of the notebook so you can now slip it in your bag, backpack or purse.



The small 8.9 inch display may bother some people so if you want a notebook which you can use as your primary computer, then the PC T91 in not the best choice for you. It is however ideal for people who travel a lot and need to stay in touch wherever they are. Personally, I would recommend this tablet pc to students that are in need of a small notebook to take notes in class. And now, for the most important part of a portable notebook: the battery life. When we heard that this system comes with a 3-cell battery we imagined that battery life would not be satisfying at all. We were wrong. With the display brightness set at medium level and the wireless function turned on, this tablet notebook provided us with 4 hours and 30 minutes of possible usage time. This means you can rely on this small tablet even if you are away from the power outlet for a couple of hours.



We recommend both of these tablets because they are both priced lower that $1000. However, the HP seems to deliver better performance compared to its price and this is another reason that lead us to believe that HP is really struggling to be the best notebook manufacturer on the market.

If you have some money to spend, but the market has so much to offer so it's rather difficult for you to decide what to buy, we are going to show you the top ten notebooks that money can buy (or, at least that is our opinion). Some of these models are cheap, other are expensive, but they each offer fair enough specs which are in good balance with their price. In short, the more you pay, the more you get.
<-300x250 Medium Rectangle - center->
Our number one notebook is without a doubt, the 13 inch Apple MacBook Pro. Not is only is this laptop powerful, it is also very good looking in comparison with many other models on the market. Since it's made from aluminum, this silver beauty looks like it's a giant diamond. The glossy display does not seem to bother us like most glossy displays do because it's all part of a higher purpose: that of creating an elegant notebook. The processor is the powerful Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 which operates at a speed of 2.4 GHz and the graphics card is none other than the nVidia GeForce 9400M with 256M of dedicated video memory. This laptop is for the people that want to stand out and be the proud owner of an Apple laptop.

It may not have the best specs in the world, but it is certainly one of the best ultra portables in the world. The Acer Timeline 1410 has a 11 inch display which doesn't make text that difficult to read and it also offers good performance considering its small size. Instead of the Intel Atom processors which are regularly chosen for this kind of small and portable notebooks, Acer as decided that an Intel Celeron SU2300 is much better for the Timeline 1410. You also get 4 GB or RAM in comparison with the 1 or 2 GB you usually get from the similarly sized notebooks (or should we call them netbooks?). This means that the Timeline 1410 will easily support Windows 7 Home Premium and you can run multiple applications much faster that you could on a 1 GB of RAM notebook. And for $400 you also get over 6 hours of battery life. This is excellent information for those that are looking for a notebook to use when they are travelling. Students can also use it in class when they want to take notes.



The Acer Aspire 8930G is probably one of the best multimedia notebook which you can possibly find. It is huge (and by huge I mean it has a 18.4 inch display plus some 9.2 pounds in weight) so you will probably want to use it a desktop replacement. Just put it on the table or desk and make sure it stays there because it isn't something you want to carry around on your shoulders. The Intel Core i7-720QM processor is one of the most powerful CPU's you'll find in a laptop. You have 4 GB of DDR3 RAM and you can upgrade to a maximum of 8 GB. The graphics card in an nVidia GeForce GTS 250M and if 500 GB of free disk space are not enough to store you files, there is always the optical drive to help you make DVD copies so you can free up some space. You have 5.1 surround speakers which means the sound quality is something amazing. Is $1300 worth it? We think it is.



If you are looking for something more unique, extravagant and business like, then the Lenovo ThinkPad X200 may just the be the best tablet PC for you. What makes this notebook so fancy and distinguishes it from the rest of the tablet PCs is the multi touch screen which is optional so you have to specify that you want it. Your operating system will surely be Windows 7 to get the best out of the speed and performance possibilities. The price is a bit spicy however ($1800) but it's ok considering that the main target is the premium one.



If you are looking, however, for a business notebook which is small, we recommend the HP ProBook 5310m. It is a black notebook that suggests elegance from the moment you first lay eyes on it. The 13.3 notebook has an 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SP9300 processor, 2 GB of RAM which are upgradeable to a maximum 4, the graphics card is an Intel GMA 4500MHD with 64MB of dedicated video memory and you have 320 GB of available disk space. You have an integrated Bluetooth which should make file transfers easier from you notebook to your phone (or between two notebooks as long as they both have Bluetooth). You can get all that for a mere $900. Come to think of it, some folks may want to buy this business notebook for home use. Why shouldn't they? It offers good specs at a low price.

For people that don't have a lot of money, we recommend the Gateway NV which is a budget notebook priced at $600. We were surprised to find that you get good specs for this price; normally lower prices mean weaker laptops. The processor is a 2.1-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 which comes with 4 GB of RAM included, an Intel GMA X4500HD graphics card plus some 320 GB of free disk space. At the opposite pole, we have a laptop which has the best specs around and also the biggest price. The Alienware M17x is the $4600 gaming laptop that offers a 2.53-GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad QX9300 processor and a nVidia's GeForce GTX 280M graphics card.



Another wise choice for approximately $800 is the Asus UL30A-A1. You have a 1.3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor and 4 GB of RAM plus another 500 GB of free disk space and the Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics card. This means you have average power at an average price. Like I said, what you pay for is what you get. Of course, we couldn't have a Dell missing from this top ten notebook list so we present the Dell Studio 14z. This $750 laptop has a 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6500, 3 GB of RAM, 320 GB of disk space and the nVidia GeForce 9400M graphics card which is pretty powerful for such a cheap laptop. Last, but not least, we bring you the Lenovo ThinkPad T400s which we believe to be one of the best business notebooks ever and out statement may be confirmed by the $2300 price. This fancy notebook has a 2.53-GHz Core 2 Duo SP9600 processor, 2 GB of RAM, 128 GB of disk storage and the Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics card. And there are many more good notebooks out there. In fact there are so many that it's becoming more and more difficult to tell which would be the wisest choice.

When we are talking about cheap laptops or cheap mini notebooks, one model which is definitely important we mention is the Asus Eee PC.
<-300x250 Medium Rectangle - center->
This cheap laptop Eee PC was believed to be a simple and ordinary mini notebook. People that now own one are extremely satisfied with its functionality and would never give up this very useful portable computer. Not only is it the ideal toy for business men that travel a lot and are in need of a tool to keep them updated with whatever is going around, it's also very practical for students that want to take notes in class. One particular model of this series is the Asus Eee PC 4G which comes in a standard white color. Be careful not to use it when your hands are sweaty of dirty because fingerprints will become immediately visible. For a price of $400 you can purchase your own unit with the Intel Mobile processor which operated at a speed of 900 MHz, 512 MB of RAM, 4 GB of available disk space and the Intel 910 video card. We know these components may sound a bit too weak at first but people that buy the cheap laptop Eee PC do so because they need a notebook which they can carry around everywhere and basically all they do with it is surf around the internet and read or write documents. This model is also available with 2 GB or 8 GB of solid state drive. The screen in only 7 inches long and the total weight of this laptop together with the AC adaptor is 2.4 pounds.

You can squeeze it in your bag together with other books or documents and you won't even feel it's there. Unfortunately, you may have some trouble getting used to the super small keyboard and this is why we recommend you type some words as a test before purchasing it. You may find that it's impossible for you to use it (especially if you have big hands) and therefore you must choose a different notebook, like the HP Mini 1000 or the Acer Aspire One. There has been a lot of compromise made with the keys due to the lack of free space. Asus wanted to make a really compact mini laptop so you will find a lot of double mapped keys. The touchpad is pretty small as well but at least it feels comfortable using it. Another minus for this laptop goes to the left and right mouse button. Instead of being two separate ones, Asus has chosen to make it one big button which looks like the SPACE key and you have to press it at the edges to use the left/right mouse button functions.  There is a very large black bezel that surrounds the display and this makes it look even smaller. This is because the two speakers are located on both sided of the display. Personally, I would have preferred a larger screen and the speakers located at the bottom but due to the placement, the sound quality should now be better.



You will find it very annoying that due to the small display, a lot of web pages will require horizontal scrolling. Surprisingly, this mini laptop has a sufficient number of ports and connections. You have 3 USB ports, a VGA out, an SD card reader, the Ethernet port, the stereo speakers, and headphone plus microphone jack. We do feel the absence of an optical drive but we can   understand why it's missing (no room). You can always choose to buy an external optical drive and attach it to one of the USB ports but since 16 GB memory stick are now available everywhere and they help you transfer and store your files much easier, why complicate things? Like we said, you can't expect great performance from such a small computer but it's good for basic office work and it is ideal if you have a travel a lot and need to use the internet wherever you are. It's a good way to keep in touch and read your e-newspaper and write important business e-mail (or just e-mailing the folks at home and letting them know how the vacation is going). It's good to have the Asus Eee PC around because you never know when it might come in handy.



One of things people will find difficult is trading the Windows operating system for Linux which is unfamiliar to most users. To our pleasant surprise, the Linux found on the Eee PC is very user friendly and you can access most of the application with the help of tabbed desktop pages. All installed software will come in handy sooner or later. You have Mozilla Firefox which is probably your preferred web browser under Windows as well. Open Office will help you with your document reading or editing and you can even work with spreadsheets. For chatting, there is an instant messenger client that works with all popular instant messaging programs (like Yahoo! or AOL).  You have a media player in case you want to watch a movie or listen to some music and last but not least, you have cute and small games that will help you pass the time on the airplane flight. You have a settings tab that will allow you to add or remove programs and perform some other system tasks.



The battery life may be disappointing. We have found some similar mini laptops that provide even up to 6 hours of battery life. Unfortunately, the Eee PC 4G will only survive 3 hours while continuously browsing the internet, editing some documents and listening to MP3 tunes. If we compare this performance to the price than there is not much to complain about but If we compare it to other netbooks available on the market, you will get a more decent battery life out of them.  In the end, we still think it's an extraordinary mini gadget for people who can't survive with constant access to the internet. We could place the Eee PC 4G somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop. Either way, it will help you stay in touch.

Depending on every persons personal income, people have different opinions on what "cheap" really means. While some may find a $1000 dress very expensive, other may thinks it's a cheap piece of clothing and they will buy it. As for electronics and gadgets, things are pretty much the same. While for some people a cheap gaming laptop means it has to be under $1500, true games will pay even $3000 for a good gaming laptop as they believe it is a small price to pay to satisfy their gaming needs. It also depends on the types of games you want to play. Monopoly and Sim City will have fewer requirements that Jericho or Call of Duty.
<-300x250 Medium Rectangle - center->
The Asus X83VB-X1 is a really cheap machine which is available at a starting price of $500. Out of all the gaming laptops you could find under $1000, this is probably one of the best choices you could make. It is cheap and the specs are quite ok. The unit reviewed in this article will cost $850 which is still a small price to pay compared to the regular prices of a gaming laptop. We loved the combination of gold and black of the chassis, it give you the impression that the laptop is much more expensive. The processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 which operates at a speed of 2.0 GHz. You have 4 GB of RAM which means you will probably get your system with Windows Vista preinstalled but you should have no trouble running Windows 7 just as well.  If 250 GB of available disk space is not enough, the DVD burner will come in handy to make copies of your files and store them on DVDs. This 14 inch laptop has an nVidia GeForce 9300M GS graphics card with 512 MB of dedicated memory which is a pretty big deal for such a cheap laptop. You will have no trouble playing old games on this laptop but new games must be played at a modest resolution. The keyboard is a little stiff and so are the left and right mouse buttons but you'll get used to it in a while and besides, if you are going to use this laptop for serious gaming, we recommend you buy a mouse.

The glossy black lid may not be so attractive if you think about its capacity to attract fingerprints but the golden pattern and the Asus logo written in golden letters make it appealing to the eye. It's certainly not something you see in a laptop every day. The palm rests are also golden while the keyboard is black. Even if the chassis is made out of plastic, it is still very solid so durability is not an issue to be concerned about. The keys are strange because the letters are golden and in dim light they may be difficult to recognize. Above the keyboard you will find 5 buttons which are not for different multimedia functions like we usually find in laptops. Instead they have other features like screen and wireless settings or power management options. The weird thing is that you have a special button to turn the Bluetooth on an off even if the laptop does not have an integrated Bluetooth. This reminded me of the Toshiba Satellite L300-1AL which has no Bluetooth even if there is a "Bluetooth" sticker on the box of the laptop. The touchpad is ok, mainly because it's bigger than most 14 inch laptop touchpads. The tough part comes with the left and right mouse buttons. It may seem like you need a pickaxe to press them because they are very stiff but hopefully they will loosen up after a while of usage.



There are two hinges that keep the display firmly in place. Even the screen looks a bit glossy, the images are sharp and clear and there are no heavy reflections that may be annoying or that may prevent you from actually seeing what is on the display. The speakers are ok and they produce quality sound considering the size of the laptop (and the size of the speakers as well). The laptop runs quietly considering there is a total of 4 vents that keep this laptop cool (three are located on the bottom side and another large vent on the right edge). One very pleasant surprise was the huge number of ports and connections available on this laptop. You have no less than 5 USB ports (my 15.4 inch laptop has only 3), a FireWire port, a multiformat card reader, an ExpressCard slot, HDMI and VGA out, the usual Ethernet port, stereo speakers, headphones and microphone jack. The 5 USB ports are places on three sides of the laptop as follows: two of them are in the back, another two on the right side and the last one is on the left side. The HDMI and Ethernet ports are located on the back edge of the laptop and the battery is placed in front, under the right corner instead of the usual bottom-back place.



As for the gaming part, the graphics card will do a pretty good job keeping you satisfied considering the low price of the machine. The performance is much better than that of any similarly priced laptop available on the market. You can play some new games with medium settings. You won't get exactly the ultimate quality experience but it will do if you are looking for a budget gaming laptop. The laptop comes with a 6-cell battery which will only deliver 2 hours and 35 minutes of intense video playback.



Since this type of battery drain test is pretty harsh, we imagine that the battery should last about 3 hours and 30 minutes if you use it for regular tasks like surfing the internet and editing documents. The laptop which come closest to this one is the Dell Studio 1535-143B but compared to the Asus X83VB-X1 it has a weaker graphic card (it uses Intel GMA X3100) and this fact ranks the Dell under the Asus in our cheap gaming laptop top.